It was an ugly morning for San
Francisco-bound commuters
from the no rth and east. A
jammed Golden Gate Bridge
and a trainless BART system
forced many to arrive at work
up to two hours late.

BART trains from Pittsburg,
Dublin, Bay Point, Pleasanton
and Fremont stopped running at
7:30 a.m. when a critical
switching mechanism in The
City stopped working for
reasons that remain mysterious,
said BART spokeswoman Vicki
Wills.

More than 100,000 would-be
riders jammed the stations.
Many peered down the tunnels
in search of the welcome
headlights that would indicate
the imminent arrival of a train.
They had a long wait.

Others, arriving at the 12th
Street Station in Oakland, were
ordered to get off their trains by
BART officials and wait for
another train into San Francisco.
At the same time, riders from
Richmond were turned back at
the MacArthur station. Wills
said they didn't like it.

"When you ask people to
off-board, they don't necessarily
want to," she said.

BART spokesman Ron
Rodriguez called the problem
one of the worst he'd seen in his
10 years with the transit system.
He recommended that anyone
not needing to use the system
should postpone discretionary
trips Wednesday.

He said the system failure
forced passenger trains to wait
as workers hand-cranked
switches and drivers conducted
the normally automated cars by
hand, producing traffic jams and
restricting speeds throughout the
system.

National Fish and Wildlife Fund
employee Calen Thomas said he
was turned around twice en
route to The City before he
finally arrived at 10:15. By then
he had missed an interview with
a job applicant.

He said he encounters similar
problems at least once a month,
but he'll still continue
commuting by BART.

"I don't have a choice," said
Thomas. "The parking is so bad,
I just have to give in to the
system."

Oakland resident Coco Shelton,
42, said she abandoned her
stopped train in the Fruitvale
station out of frustration, took a
bus to West Oakland and found
the next train passing through
too crowded to board.

When she clambered onto the
second train to arrive, she
realized it was the original train
she had left

much earlier. "It was so bad ,I'm
21/2 hours late for work," she
said when she finally arrived at
the Powell Street station. "It's
ridiculous. I say they should
give us BART free for a week.''

The trains were running again,
under a manual system, by 8:30
a.m., but more slowly than usual
because only one train at a time
could go through the long tunnel
under the Bay into The City. As
a result, commuters faced
half-hour delays on top of their
initial wait.

Later in the morning, frustration
at the Oakland stops continued
because, even though trains
were showing up, they were so
packed that only a couple of
waiting passengers could board.

"It's always chaos" when such
delays occur, Wills noted.

What's more, she said, "We
don't know what caused the
problem at this time."

The BART problems apparently
prompted many commuters to
drive, which in turn meant
heavier than normal traffic on
the freeway. One motorist
heading for San Francisco said
traffic going into The City was
backed up all the way to the
Caldecott Tunnel at
mid-morning.

Meanwhile, a bicyclist who
commutes across the Golden
Gate Bridge every day from his
Fairfax home was seriously
injured when the front wheel of
his bike came off and he flew
over the handlebars onto the
concrete walkway.

Coby Larson, 30, was taken to
Marin General Hospital, where
he was being treated for facial
cuts and a possible head injury.

Larson was riding his bike
southbound on the sidewalk at
approximately 7:50 a.m. when
the front wheel came off as he
was between the south tower
and the toll plaza.

Northbound traffic was stopped
for more than a half-hour as
emergency vehicles tended to
the injured bicyclist, and
southbound was slowed to a
crawl as drivers g